The Project Manager as Disciplinarian

If your project does not have a strong a central organising individual, it will flounder, atrophy, and then collapse.

A project is a collection of talented individuals from many disciplines, individuals with their own agendas and their own visions and their own priorities. This collection falls down into disorganisation without someone providing the structure for the group to act.

Hence it is critical that the project manager be a disciplinarian.  I mean that in the sense that he or she imposes discipline to the group. 

The PM acts as the catalyst that energises the group.  The PM articulates the single vision of the project, makes everyone turn their heads toward that vision, and makes them march together toward that vision.

The PM must be forceful, not necessarily in the sense of overbearing or overpowering but in the sense of being the force that pushes the project forward day by day, prevailing over forces that will tend to rend the group apart into many directions, and keeps it – herds it - aimed in the right direction.